what does it mean to be canadian or ontarian?

Labour Conditions in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Ontario has a very interesting history of labour relations and conditions. From the creation of a capitalist labour market to the provincial legislation of workers rights, Ontario has a varied history. By looking at the labour conditions of the workers on the Rideau Canal and the Welland Canal and comparing the two together, one gets a picture of rising militancy amongst workers. The gradual development of labour laws such as the Ontario Factories Act fits in with the narrative of Ontario having a progressive conservative political culture, as the conditions of workers, especially women and children , improved greatly from the period of 1826 until 1900.
The construction of the Rideau Canal began in 1826, and the canal was designed as a way to bypass the American border along the St. Lawrence River. This occurred at a time when Ontario was seeing the creation of a labour market. This was caused by two factors. The first being a wave of emigration from Great Britain, which was mostly Irish in nature, particularly from the Ulster region which was experiencing a crisis in its textile industry.(1) The second cause, being more local in nature had to do with the transfer of many French Canadian farm workers to cities. This meant that there was a lot of labour around which could be put to use. One of the main ways to employ such a large number of workers was on public works projects, such as canals.

One issue with the construction of the Rideau Canal had to due with the way the work was contracted out. Many contractors would in turn hire subcontractors. The number of different employers makes it hard to generalise about the conditions of the worker’s camps, but one thing is certain, that for many employers “it was expedient to view the workers primarily as instruments of production required to facilitate the most economical completion of the project.”(2)

When it comes to talking about the workers themselves, there is a perception that the majority of the workers were Irish, but the enterprises that have information available suggest that a large number of French Canadians were employed, which could be partially caused by a depression in the timber trade. (3) It is possible that many employers viewed the French Canadians as more reliable, as they were more used to the country.

When one looks at the wages of the workers, especially the unskilled ones, it does not seem to be very profitable to work on the canals. The cost of living in the camps would take most of the wages, and the employers saw a way to extract even more money through the use of company stores. The Redpath and McKay workers, for example seemed to always be in debt and dependent on the company for credit. (4) In addition to this, the workers had very little job security. Sometimes the sites shut down over the winter or the contract could be abandoned, leaving the workers with nothing.

Another issue the workers faced was job safety. Several jobs involved the use of explosives, whether to clear stumps from a field or do work in a quarry. Part of the reason for the danger was the powder used, which was impossible for even the experienced quarry men to predict. (5) There was also problems caused by careless management. As William Wylie says in his article “the working life of the labourer was arduous. During the summer he worked fourteen to sixteen hour days, six days a week.” (6) The biggest issues facing the workers was disease. In three consecutive years, work was stopped in the late summer due to disease. (7) The diseases would strike at those the worst off already, particularly Irish immigrants who had relocated without much money.

At least three strikes were staged in Bytown by workers. They involved all the workers in the area, not just Irish or Catholic workers, with most of the actions being designed to get the workers the immediate necessities for survival. (8)In response, Colonel By called up the military to put down the strike and maintain order.

In comparison to the Rideau Canal workers, the predominately Irish workers on the Welland Canal were much more militant in their organizing, and other activities. By the 1840s many immigrants were forced into the labour market as the land granting and settlement policies had come to an end(9) This period saw not only a rise in the amount of immigration from Europe, but a number of Irish immigrants came from across the American border, where previously thousands had gone to work on one of the many American public works projects that by 1842 had totally dried up and left them without any work. (10) Due to the high number of workers, there was never enough work to keep everyone employed, and like the Rideau Canal, work stopped over the winter. In fact, many of the labourers were so poor that they could not afford to live anywhere except along the canal. Samuel Power, Superintendent of the Canal said “the majority are so destitute that they are unable to go. The remainder are unwilling as there is not elsewhere any hope of employment. ” (11) In 1842, there was as many impoverished Irish navvies living in the shanties along the canals with their families as there were permanent residents in the towns of St Catharines and Thorold. (12) This, as in the case of the Rideau canal provided a large pool of labourers which the contractors could hire for a day or week at a time. The low price of wages, meant that a single labourer could only feed himself and his wife, no children and only on the days which he had gotten paid, which in the best cases was only twenty days a month in the summer and ten in the winter. (13)

Like the canal workers at the Rideau, workers on the Welland Canal were often exploited by company stores, and the practise of being paid in credits redeemable only at the company store. This meant that the workers often received no money, and would end up being no richer then when he began. The abuse of this situation was so bad that the Board of Works introduced a clause in their contracts stipulating that wages must be paid in cash. (14)

Canallers had to find their own accommodations, which meant that most had to build their own. Canallers often shared whatever housing they could, and of the 163 shanties built at Broad Creek on the Welland, only 29 were single family homes. (15) They also took their religion very seriously, building chapels and donating to the local Catholic churches. The workers often organized events which put them into direct contact with the Protestant Orangemen, for example “in 1844 all the canallers along the Welland, organized under leaders and joined by friends from public works projects in Buffalo, marched to confront Toronto Orangemen and their families on an excursion to Niagara Falls.” (16) This suggests a fairly high degree of organization and social cohesion. This could be due to the fact that the Welland canal workers were a more homogenous group then those who worked on the Rideau Canal.

The workers did not organize just to combat Orangemen, however. In the first year of the construction of the Welland Canal, thousands of workers took to the streets of St Catharines with placards demanding “Bread or Work”, who at one point broke into stores, mills and a schooner. (17) Mathews notes that the other side of the placard read “Peace and Union – God Save the Queen” and that when they were ordered to disperse that is when they pillaged the town. (18) These efforts were not all failures, as the Irish set aside their regional differences and united as ‘Irish labourers’ to ensure that no one took the Board of Works jobs, going so far as to put up posters along the canal threatening death and vengeance to anyone who took a job before everyone had one. (19) By shutting down the work on the canals, the workers forced the superintendent to create more jobs. This suggests that the group of canal workers in Welland were able to put aside their cultural differences in order to fight for their class interests. The division amoung Irish and French Canadian on the Rideau canal inhibited this kind of organization, as they only struck three times. The workers in Welland did the same thing the next year, again gaining concessions from Superintendent Powers. Ruth Bleasdale, who’s work on the Welland Canal is well known, says “during frequent strikes along the canals the antagonistic relationship between the two [Irish] factions was subordinated to the labourer’s common hostility towards their employers, so that in relation to the contractors the canallers stood united.” (20) In Britain the Irish workers’ willingness to challenge laws earned them a reputation for militancy in the union movements, and this same style could be found in Canada as well.

The government’s opposition to the strikes rested on the idea that workers should not try and influence wage rates and the actions of the canallers was a “state of insubordination amoung the labourers.” (21) the Board of Works devised a number of strategies to try to combat or prevent strikes. One of the methods used by the Board was to collude with contractors in order to black list the participants in order to break the organization. Although by British common law workers had the right to form ‘combinations’ or unions, this right was sometimes violated. For example, when the chief advisor on labour unrest suggested that the government suppress the “illegal” combinations, he was expressing a commonly held view at the time. (22)

This sentiment surrounding the legality of combinations was particularly clear in Toronto. From 1854 until 1872 there was a number of criminal cases involving whether it was a conspiracy for workers to combine to regulate wages or hours. Paul Craven, using several court cases wants to prove that prior to the passage of the Trade Unions Act, trade unions were not unlawful. (23) The dates chosen by Craven represent the first trade union conspiracy case at the start, and the passing of the Trade Unions Act at the end.

The issue in question is why it appears that it was considered a conspiracy to combine to raise wages. Take for example the case of William White for example. (24) White was fired and returned to speak with some of his co-workers. He was ordered out by his former boss, Mr. Polson, who believed that since White was a member of the Shoemaker’s Society he only wanted to cause trouble amongst the workers. A shoving match took place and Polson was struck and received a black eye. The Police Magistrate “made a few remarks on the illegality of such combinations, and cited the recent verdict at the Assizes, on the Tailor’s conspiracy, as a case in point. This left it somewhat unclear then, whether the tailors were convicted on conspiracy that was unlawful in its purpose or in the ends adopted to achieve them.” (25)This ambiguousness is what Craven is trying to clarify by looking at the various cases. Craven suggests the idea that it was confusion that brought this connection as the cases regarding the cabmen’s conspiracies of 1858 and 1869. Craven says that “both cases turned on a conspiracy to commit a crime – threatening, assault, willful danger – rather than to effect a result that, bar the conspiracy, would have been lawful, although [the judge’s] comment on ‘combinations’ might have blurred the distinction.” (26)

Craven reaches three conclusions from examining the conspiracy trails. The first conclusion is that although workers were charged with a variety of crimes relating to conspiracy, no one was sent to trial for conspiring to raise wages without having other charges in addition. (27)The second conclusion he makes is that the court had an opportunity to charge workers for conspiracy to raise wages, but did not unless it was connected to another crime. The third conclusion Craven makes is that although many public figures such as police magistrates or newspaper writers expressed their distaste of trade unions, carefully reading their comments suggest that they knew unions were not criminal. (28) Craven suggests that the reason that conspiracy to raise wages could be a crime was to serve “as the evidence of combination to link a number of defendants together in proving a conspiracy to a crime like assault or threatening. The combination to raise wages was not in itself criminal but showed…an element of conspiracy.” (29) This suggests that it was just one more tool by which the prosecution can gain their desired result.

Craven’s article shows the importance legislation and the law can play in regards to how workers can organize and act in a way to benefit themselves economically. As the example of the Welland canallers set, organizing and showing worker solidarity directly translated into more employment and higher wages. Labourers were sought after by both the Conservative and Liberal governments at the federal level. Bernard Ostry says that the “party attitudes to Canada’s nascent labour movement were clearly reflected in the federal legislation of successive Conservative and Liberal administrations. Especially this was true of the Trade Union Act of 1872 and the Breaches of Contract Act of 1977.” (30) Macdonald’s Conservative party was the favourite of labour federally, however by 1880, labour begun to set its sights on a policy on non-involvement politically. (31) At the same time however, Ontario Premier, Oliver Mowat, introduced important labour legislation in Ontario. By comparing the inaction at the federal level with the actions of Mowat, one can see that “a considerable amount of social legislation had by then been placed upon the provincial statute books by Mowat’s Liberal administration. Mowat had listened carefully and sympathetically to the demands of delegations from the Toronto Trades Assembly and the Trades and Labour Congresses.” (32) The most extensive of the labour legislation passed by Mowat’s Liberals was the Ontario Factories Act., which was passed in 1884, but did not take effect until 1886. (33)

The Ontario Factories Act was designed to help protect the workers in factories, which with “the introduction of steam powered machinery, new technologies, and large crowded workplaces combined with the intensification of the labour process through speed-ups, higher levels of supervision and discipline…produced serious health and safety hazards for workers.” (34) The act contained three kinds of provisions, the first set regulating child and female labour, the second set were those regulating all factory work. The third set of provisions dealt with the administration and enforcement aspect of the Act. (35) The act however, did have some immediately noticeable short comes, even before it came into power. One issue was the fact that it only applied to those working in factories, as well as doing nothing to define an employee, and it excluded those who do repair work from its protection (s. 23) (36)

The first set of provisions, those dealing with the labour of women and children, established age brackets and established maximums on daily and weekly hours. Any person under the age of fourteen was considered a child, and young girls between fourteen and eighteen. To enforce this aspect of the Act, anyone found on the premises were deemed employees, with the onus on the employer to prove the worker was of age or face a fine. (37) The limits established were a ten hour day and sixty hour work weeks for children, young girls and women. In addition women and children were also to be provided with one hour lunch breaks.

The second set of provisions imposed a duty onto the employers to “not keep a factory so that the health of any person employed therein is likely to be permanently injured.” (38) It also created minimum safety standards for fire safety and for placing guards around moving parts.

The third and most important set of provisions in the act deals with the administration and enforcement of the act. Originally only one inspector was to be chosen, who would be empowered to enter and inspect factories at all reasonable times without a warrant, and allowed the inspector to call upon a constable if he is in need or assistance or to fine anyone who obstructs their job. (39)

Although the act was to become active on December 1, 1886, no arrangements for enforcement were made until the spring of 1887. Due to lobbying by both the Canadian Manufacturers Association, and the Toronto Trades and Labour Council the government decided to add two more inspectors. The unions hoped they would be pro-labour, whereas the CMA wanted to have moderates who would be less militant. (40)

The three inspectors chosen were Robert Barber, a manufacturer who was appointed inspector of western Toronto, James R. Brown, a mechanic from Oshawa was appointed inspector of eastern Toronto, and O.A. Roque who was appointed inspector for the Ottawa region. (41) Of the three, it seems Brown is the only one with a history of labour activism, and had ties to the Knights of Labour. The Knights of Labour were a working class organization that was also strongly Christian. This can remind us of the way the canallers united around their culture and religion to engender solidarity. Lynne Marks in her study of the Knights of Labour says that “the Knights’ Christian beliefs did not kindle their anger against the capitalist system, but the disparity between the Christian message and nineteenth-century capitalism would have fuelled such anger.” (42)

The enforcement of the Act was a tricky issue, as the Act itself gave quite a bit of leeway for employers. In the first twelve years the act was valid, thirty-five charges were prosecuted, with thirty-one of those being brought forward by Brown. (43) Looking back at the data is appears that Brown had about 224 factories in his district. One thing which made it even harder to enforce was that in 1889, an amendment was made to the Act which made all factories with more then five employees subject to its provisions., but to help out they hired a fourth inspector, Margaret Carlyle. (44) Carlyle was given jurisdiction over cases dealing with women and children. It can be suggested that the conditions of children working in the factories for ten hours a day must have been pretty dangerous, they were forced to work in order to survive. Lorna Hurl, who writes about child labour says that “legislators have proven so accommodating during the 1880s that they had made amendments to the School Act to permit working students to attend school only half time.” (45)

What mattered most however to the enforcement of the Act was the inspectors themselves. This case shows the drastic difference between Barber and Brown, who could be said to represent the CMA and the labour unions respectively. On October 24, 1899, letters from the TTLC were sent complaining about the dust in a number of factories in Toronto. Some of these factories were in Barber’s district, others in Brown’s. In the end Barber reported that he did not find the conditions bad enough for him to act, and that it viewed it as the whole thin being a bunch of trouble caused by the Polishers’ Union. (46) Brown, on the other hand recommended fans be installed and brought in Peter Bryce, Secretary to the Provincial Board of Health to also inspect the factories in question. Bryce concurred with Brown. (47) The Ontario Factories Act played a large role in increasing the safety standards and conditions of labourers in Ontario. In fact, factory legislation can be seen as a concession to labour that the state “be empowered to insure that minimally safe and healthy work place conditions were provided by employers.” (48) With the exemption of James Brown the inspectors took a very moderate position in regards to the plight of workers, and expected labourers to adopt to the new standards. (49)

By examining the conditions of labourers who worked at the Rideau Canal, and the Welland Canal, one notices that the higher militancy of the Irish canallers won them higher wages and more employment, whereas the strikes attempted at Bytown were suppressed by the military. The workers claims for Bread or Work represent how tough in can be to stay alive as a member of the unskilled labour market, especially at a time with such high levels of immigration, willing to work for little more than subsistence wage. It has also been shown the many ways in which an employer will exploit their labourers, whether it is by overcharging at the company store, paying only in coupons, dangerous working conditions, and the willingness to conspire with authorities to deny the workers their legal right to combine to raise wages.
As Craven’s article shows, it was never illegal to organize a trade union prior to 1872, it was possible to be charged for it in conjunction with other crimes. The Ontario Liberal Party saw an opportunity to capture a widely growing demographic, which appealed to many in the middle class, by passing the Ontario Factories Act. Although, not perfect, it provided minimums to protect the well being of children and women, and provided a start in other areas such as fire safety and machine guards.
The moderate approach Mowat took by passing the Factory Act when he did shows the narrative of Ontario’s political culture being a progressive conservative one to be true. Macdonald’s government did not act at the right moment, and as a result, Mowat was able to become very popular and win lots of prestige for Ontario before he entered federal politics and became a senator.